


bite my tongue, bide my time

by tuffgreg



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, brief mention of spiders, post episode 160
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:48:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21657022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuffgreg/pseuds/tuffgreg
Summary: martin, watching jon, under the watcher’s crown. a brief moment in the uncertain aftermath.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 3
Kudos: 99





	bite my tongue, bide my time

Jon looks out into the world, and he isn’t afraid.

Martin hasn’t asked, and Jon hasn’t said anything, beyond the horrifying revelation of what happened in the fleeting moments between good cows and very, very bad ones.

But when Martin looks out of the window into the wild, reckless everything that Jon has unwittingly made of a world that Martin already felt half a step behind, Martin feels nothing but an all-consuming horror, a deep fear that encompasses so much of who he is that he knows it’s readily apparent from even a fleeting glance cast in his direction.

Jon shows nothing. And while Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, has never been a person anyone would call ... emotive, Martin has heard him with a warbling uncertainty in his voice. Seen the pallor of not knowing in his face. The grim resignation of knowing too much he wishes he could unknow. Even those first moments of horrified laughter have been left behind as the weight of the end of all things sinks deep into the Archivist’s bones.

Under the Watcher’s crown, Jon knows everything. Jonathan Sims can see, and touch, and  _ know _ every nightmarish thing that has taunted him from a distance for years. Since he was a child. And in the same way that causes a creeping, consuming dread to crawl over every part of Martin from the inside out if he lingers too close to the door, a window, a drainpipe, outside, Martin can see that the comfort of bearing witness to every sprawling evil all at once fills Jon with a sense of resolve that keeps his hands steady as they curl around Martin’s own trembling, desperate fingers late at night, or what they think is night, since Jon read Elias’ ... Jonah’s final terrible statement.

Sometimes Jon goes outside just to —  look . He never goes too far, because the farther away he is from Martin the more all those nightmarish things lurking on the edge of their artificially idyllic hideaway think about pressing their luck. Martin can tell they’re thinking about it in the way the house groans on its foundation and spiders skitter ever closer and the water goes foul and brackish if he risks turning the faucet on while Jon’s just ... _watching_.

And sometimes Martin watches from the window, through the gossamer strands of webs that start to form as he approaches. Never inside, yet. But on the days when Jon walks farther from the house — not far, a few steps, never so far that Martin can’t see him or he can’t feel the heavy, anxious weight of Martin’s eyes on him from the window — there sometimes comes a restless tapping. Tiny and faint. Little legs against the glass. Let me in.

Martin does not. He doesn’t touch the window or the windowsill. He drags out, reluctantly, the cool and heartless distance of the Lonely, the sensation of being wholly separate and untouchable, to gird himself against the relentless tap, tap, tap, and swift spinning of increasingly dense webs that threaten to obscure his view.

Martin’s watching now, seated inches away, hands clasped between his knees as he braces his body against the relentless trembling that plagues him when Jon wanders any farther than the next room. When Jon wanders outside. He whispers lines of old poetry to himself against the creeping mantra something whispers in his ear: _today is the day he’ll keep going. Today is the day Martin will be left alone._

Martin watches Jon from the window. He steps just slightly farther than usual, this time just past the end of the little entry path where it meets the quaint and rapidly deteriorating short white picket fence. It feels like he’s testing something. He stares out into the impossible wrongness of the world for several moments, and then all at once abruptly turns around.

Jon turns and watches Martin instead, fierce and steely-spined with an uncanny resolve. For a fleeting moment it feels as if that watching sky is a halo around Jon’s graying hair, glowing, framing a worn face full of that all-knowing intensity. He starts back down the path, back to the house. To Martin. The web catches fire. Tap tap tap. Next time.

The door opens and closes with a shrill, rusty creak. The house groans beneath the weight of Jon’s footsteps, resetting its own bones under his watchful eye. “We’ll have to leave soon,” he says.

“We,” Martin repeats, higher and more surprised than he wants to sound. He tries to move away from the window in a way that could be classified as something more graceful than scrambling.

Jon purses his lips. That, at least, is familiar. As familiar now as the heavy intensity of his gaze when it swings on Martin, _searching_ there for a moment before he curses and restrains himself. “Goddammit, I —“

“No, it’s—“ Martin falters. “It’s, that’s probably good. Right now. I can’t...”

He trails off. He has words for less and less, every time he looks outside. Jon looks at him again, searching now with more warmth and uncertainty coloring his face. “You think I might leave?”

“Afraid.” Something makes Martin feel like it’s an important distinction. Not the compulsion. Just — kindness. “I don’t— want you to. But do you have to? I ... everything is so different, Jon.”  Jon’s different , something whispers in his ear. He flinches and Jon scowls.

“Get  _** out ** _ .”

Jon’s voice rings with the command and Martin doesn’t move. The unease, what part of it at least was a response to Martin’s instinctive grasping at a power he should have left behind and not at the cruel reality of the new world, recedes, however, and he nearly collapses until Jon catches him fumblingly in his arms.

“Foolish,” he grouses. There’s a fondness in his voice and in the way he rolls his unblinking, all-seeing eyes as Martin wrinkles his nose in unspoken retort. Jon ushers him to the couch and then goes to light two gentle candles before pulling the heavy curtain shut. The Desolation is too gleeful with the world to trifle with them, at least for now, but the Forever Blind is so profoundly hateful with the knowledge of its failed rituals that neither of them is willing to take any risks.

Jon turns and watches Martin again in the hazy glow. He looks, and then he  _ looks _ , Martin feeling the gentle searching push for all the things he can’t bring himself to say, and lets Jon hear them without hearing. Jon makes the kind of thoughtful noise that Martin finds almost comical coming from the man who brought the world’s end — Jon rolls his eyes again and grimaces — and then Jon sits, and takes Martin’s clammy trembling hand in his firm, certain grip.

“You’re the only thing that makes me, me,” Jon says plainly. He lifts Martin’s hand and kisses the back of it and leaves it there, looking towards the door. “Certainly now. And I want to stay me for you, so. We leave, or we don’t leave, but I rather assumed you would want to rush foolhardy into saving everyone once again, sooner or later.”

Fair. Jon squeezes Martin’s hand and drops their tangled fingers back to his lap, and Martin stares at them for a moment before meeting Jon’s eyes. “Well, I hate to think of where you’d be if I wasn’t here.” He aims for glib and lands somewhere far afield of it. Jon squeezes his hand again. This time, Martin squeezes back.

**Author's Note:**

> hi i’m new i just binged tma in like a week, everyone does such good fic and i just wanted to join in


End file.
